Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Newtown No Simple Answers: Simple Living Ideas

I never would have imaged that I'd be writing my second post within 2 months time about the death of children. My town lost 2 boys during Hurricane Sandy now 15 minutes from my home 20 children are killed. I can't tell you how painful it was and still is for my town having lost those boys. I can not image the pain Newtown is feeling right now. The number of children dead is almost impossible to image never mind cope with...Newtown, CT is a very special place to me. One of my oldest friends has lived there for over 20 years in a big old colonial house on Main Street with her 4 children. I can still remember the time my husband got stuck on the roof while helping to paint the house. Before kids my husband and I used to go to the movies in Newtown, in a quaint old theater that is actually part of the town hall. Our friends from Newtown hosted a wedding party for us. It was the most genuinely fun and unpretentious party... all the guests played wiffle ball in our dress up clothes.Every Labor Day my family gets up at dawn and drives to Newtown so we can make donuts with our friends before the big parade starts. You see Newtown's Labor Day parade is famous... it is the best in the state. Every politician makes sure to attend it, but it is always the Shriners driving miniature cars that steal the show.Now the show has permanently been stolen from this quintessential American town. Newtown will now be remembered as the home of the largest gun killing of children in our country's history. How could this happen in this town you ask?

The same way it can happen anywhere in the United States.

It is time... in the memory of the children and teachers lost in this massacre... it is time.

Time to really figure out a national gun control policy that will not inhibit hunters, but will inhibit murderers.

This is a simple living blog, and I wish I could write a simple solution to our country’s gun problem, but it is not a simplistic problem even though our politicians have been addressing it as one.

We don't have to choose between having or not having guns. I am tired of the NRA saying this... My father was in the military and collected old pistols. My brother likes to shoot at a range. My husband is a skeet shooter, and my Boy Scout son just got his merit badge in riflery. I am not anti-guns.

The guns, semi-automatic pistols and a rifle, used in the Newtown massacre were obtained legally, but a mentally ill person got a hold of them, so having assault weapons available to the general public is not safe.

Assault weapons, like the ones used in the Newtown Ct killings, are designed for warfare. They are designed to kill the most number of people as quickly and effectively as possible. They are not for civilian use, and they are not for sportsmen. There is nothing sporting about an automatic rifle. It is designed to slaughter, not to hunt.I am tired of the argument that people not guns kill. On the same day of the Newtown slayings, a man in China stabbed 29 people, mostly small children, all of them survived. If he had a gun they may not have survived. Click here to read report.

Please write your politicians, sign petitions, talk to your friends and family. Even if the conversation gets a little uncomfortable as a nation we need to have it.The conversation needs to not only be about guns, but also about mental health care in this country. All insurance policies should be required to cover it. There are too many mentally ill people who could potentially be dangers to society who are not getting the treatment and care they need. Please read this article by a woman who has a mentally ill son to understand what these families are going through... click here: I Am Adam Lanza's Mother.

Let your voice be heard... whatever your position.

Click here to sign a petition to the government and the NRA that we need a change in gun control laws.

Click here for a list of charities that are helping the families of the victims of the Newtown killings.It is time.

11 comments:

It is nice to read an article where someone is thinking and not just speaking an emotion. One reason that this nation is so polarized on hot topice - politics, gun control, abortion - is because we simplify and label and issue as good or bad. This makes it so easy and if we are for something good, then the opposition must be bad. We can't be so simplistic on complex issues.

You have such a good head on your shoulders Diane. I think you've addressed this exactly how it needs to be. We need stricter gun laws, that still allows civilians access to appropraite guns. For me, the mental health is my biggest concern. I don't know how we can "fix" it, but it needs to be addressed. It's not something I share really at all, but I have a brother with mental health problems, and he is in prison. He has been since my oldest was born. I keep hoping someone will find something to help more, but right now there isn't anything. It is so painful.Thoughts and prayers go out to our nation that we can get through this difficult time.

Adelina, I'm so sorry to hear about your brother. Too many people with mental health problems are in prison. Prison is not the place for them. When we deinstitutionalized mental health in the late 1970's we never came up with a different way to deal with people with mental health problems. My sister who is mentally retarded is in a good group home but there are many bad ones and not enough of them for people with mental health issues.

Children's mental health is an issue very near and dear to me. It is so important when dealing with mental health issues to reach out and get support for the whole family - not try to shelter the world from it. It takes a village, right?

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